NY school-bus drivers strike

Tens of thousands of New York City children who usually ride school buses took subways, taxis and private cars to school Wednesday as more than 8,000 bus drivers and aides went on strike to keep their jobs.

“I love my job, and I don’t want to be looking for another one,” said bus driver Robert Behrens, who manned a picket line in Queens.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said police were called after some strikers blocked gates to keep buses from leaving and warned, “We won’t permit that kind of reprehensible conduct.”

Union head Michael Cordiello said the drivers will strike until Bloomberg and the city agree to put a job-security clause back into their contract.

“I came to urge the mayor to resolve this strike,” said Cordiello, president of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union. “It is within his power to do so.”

But Bloomberg said the strike “is about job guarantees that the union just can’t have.”

After the union announced a strike Monday, city officials said they would hand out transit passes to students who can get to school on subways and city buses and reimburse parents who must take taxis or drive private cars.

Peter Curry’s 7-year-old daughter, Maisy, is in a wheelchair and usually is picked up by a bus with a mechanical lift. On Wednesday, he drove her from lower Manhattan to her school in the Chelsea neighborhood.

“It means transferring her to the car, breaking down the wheelchair, getting here, setting up the wheelchair, transferring her from the car, when normally she would just wheel right into the school bus,” Curry said. “She’s on oxygen. There’s a lot of equipment that has to be moved and transferred, also.”

Wednesday’s walkout was by the largest bus-drivers’ union; some bus routes served by other unions were operating. The city Department of Education said approximately 3,000 bus routes out of a total of 7,700 were running.

Most of the city’s roughly 1.1 million public-school students take public transportation or walk to school.

Those who rely on the buses include 54,000 special-education students and others who live far from schools or transportation. They also include students who attend specialized school programs outside of their neighborhoods.